He Did What With My Mother?
by AgiVega
Summary: Temeraire talks too much. Emily gets shocked.


**A/N:** This is sort of a companion piece to my other short one-shot, '_Of Birds and Bees and Dragons_' in which we explored a possible way for Temeraire learning about Laurence's relationship to Jane. This time it's Emily's turn to learn about it.

This ficlet is dedicated to **Ronie-chan**, a devoted fan of my Temeraire fanart on deviantArt. Since she's only read the first three books, she didn't dare read any of my other Temeraire fics, in fear of being spoiled. I hope you're satisfied to know that this story only builds on the first three books, Ronie! :)

**Disclaimer:** It's all Novik's. Even a few lines in this story are quoted from her _Black Powder War_.

Much thanks to my faithful friend Michael for the beta! :)

**He Did **_**What **_**With My Mother?**

At the end of a long and tiring day of flight, nothing felt nicer than to sit down by a lovely mountain lake, listen to the crackling of a fire and wait for dinner to be ready. With muscles stiff and brain addled with endless practice of trigonometry, Emily was grateful just to feel earth under her feet and soft grass under her bum after her lengthy and uncomfortable perch on Temeraire's back.

The softness of the grass and the delicious smells wafting from Gong Su's cauldron lulled her into a stupor bordering on sleep. Her head lolling onto Dyer's shoulder, she watched through half-closed eyelids as Temeraire frolicked in the water. A small, still functioning part of her brain told her that she must use every second of having Dyer as her pillow, for as soon as dinner was ready, the boy would jump up from the ground to be one of the first in line for food. Because boys – and men in general – more often than not let their stomachs do the thinking instead of their brains. Though, according to her mother, sometimes it was a wholly different part of their body that they allowed to overrule their brains' instructions. All in all, males were by no means sensible creatures, that much was clear to Emily. But at least they made acceptable pillows.

"Did you have a pleasant bathe?" she heard the captain's words drifting from a distance, as though coming through a mist that clouded not only her sight but muffled her hearing as well.

"Oh, yes, those rocks were very nice," Temeraire replied, his voice much clearer and stronger than the captain's, but still a little hazy, "although it was not _quite_ as agreeable as being with Mei."

_Mei?_ – Emily frowned in her almost-sleep. _What does this have to do with some Imperial dragon back in Peking?_ Reminding herself that males – be they human or dragon – were prone to making absolutely nonsensical statements, Emily snuggled herself into a more comfortable position, which resulted in her whole upper body leaning on poor Dyer's, leaving the boy no room to move at all.

"Oh, dear," Granby groaned somewhere at the edge of Emily's conscious, "Mr. Ferris! Mr. Ferris, tell those boys to pour out that water, and go and fetch some from the stream instead, if you please."

Emily once again noted to herself that men were weird and their instructions even weirder, when suddenly the captain's outraged voice said, "Temeraire!"

Emily sighed. Apparently the crew had conspired against her and decided that they would not let her sleep. Still, she was yet unwilling to open her eyes, it felt so nice to nap on Dyer.

"Yes?" the dragon replied in a voice that suggested he was completely unaware why Laurence had called to him in such a reprimanding tone. "Well, do you not find it more pleasant to be with Jane, than to—"

"Mr. Granby, pray call the men to dinner now," was Laurence's reply, sounding nervous and insecure, something Emily was not used to hearing from her captain.

_Wait… __**wha**__**t** does he find pleasant with Mother?_ Her eyes flew open, and for a few seconds she looked around in a disoriented way, as though she did not know where she was and what was happening to her. She quickly established that she was wide awake, sitting by a little mountain lake somewhere in China, and Temeraire's crew was bustling around her. A little to the right Temeraire curled his tail around himself with a thoroughly satisfied expression, as for Laurence – Laurence was staring in _her_ direction, and as their eyes met, he quickly looked away, the earlier rosy flush on his cheeks deepening into an almost ugly shade of red. He hastily murmured something to Temeraire, and the dragon replied with a perfectly natural air, "Of course you would not do it with rocks. You would do it with your hands."

A muffled sort of laughter ran down the camp, as Temeraire, being a heavy weight, never managed to say anything confidentially, even if he tried.

"With his hands? What?" Emily rubbed her eyes, still feeling somewhat disoriented, and having the impression that she had missed something. "What is this all about?" She whispered to Dyer, who was shaking with barely suppressed laughter. When the boy did not reply, she grabbed his arm and shook him. "Dyer, look at me, and tell me what happened!"

"Er… Emily…" the boy made a face, "you know… Temeraire sort of… enjoyed himself in the lake, and that's why we mustn't drink from the water, only from the stream."

The girl knitted her eyebrows, not having the slightest idea what her friend was hinting at. "Dyer… I am not going to ask you once more… explain!"

There must have been something utterly menacing in her voice and her eyes, for the boy swallowed, blood running out of his face. Perhaps this was what her mother sometimes called 'The Roland Effect'.

"Er… I'm sorry, Emily, but… if your mother hasn't told you yet… then I hardly think I'm the one to tell you…"

"Oh, _that_," she breathed, something Jane Roland had once mentioned to her flashing into her mind. She felt suddenly very stupid and very slow, but could at least blame it on having just awoken from near slumber. "So you mean that Temeraire…" She once again glanced at the dragon who still wore a shamelessly beatific expression. "Yuck! Just to think we could have drunk that water…"

The two children looked at each other with equally disgusted grimaces, then, seeing the disgust on each other's faces, they dissolved into laughter.

"You surprise me, Emily," Dyer chuckled, no longer looking scared of her, "or your mother does, to be exact. Did she honestly tell you these things?"

"Yeah. Pretty much all of it. All the sordid little details of the… act. I think she's managed to repulse me enough to make sure I would never want to do it! But perhaps that was her purpose… you know, to protect my… honour. Though why she would do that, I cannot fathom… she never cared for her own…" No sooner had these words left her lips than Emily stiffened as though petrified, only her eyes swept across the camp to find her captain and once again settle on him.

…_do you not find it more pleasant to be with Jane, than…_

"Jesus Christ," she breathed, feeling even stupider than a minute ago.

"What?" asked Dyer.

With eyes bulging, Emily stared at Laurence who was looking in another direction, but he might have felt her gaze upon him, for he slightly turned his head, and as their eyes locked, he once again blushed like mad and looked away.

"He suspects that I know," she whispered.

"You know… what?" Dyer pressed.

"Oh, don't pretend to be so slow on the uptake," she hissed, "Temeraire has just told everyone that our captain is bedding my mother!"

"He hasn't _just_ told anyone, as everyone has known it for quite a while," Dyer scratched his head with an embarrassed expression.

"What?" Emily's jaw dropped. "You mean that… everyone… _you included_… KNEW?"

"Emily, you're stifling me!" Dyer whimpered, and that was when she realised she had grabbed his neckcloth and held it so tightly that the poor boy's head was turning purple.

"Sorry," she released him. "No, actually I'm not sorry at all! Peter Dyer, you have been aware what our captain has been doing with my mother and never cared to mention it to me? You'd deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered for betraying your best friend like that!"

"Emily, shhh!" Dyer pressed his index finger on his lips, and cast a quick glance around to see that most of the crew were staring in their direction. Only Laurence was deliberately avoiding their glances. "Besides, I wasn't entirely sure. I have heard… gossip, but since I wasn't sure, I didn't want to discuss it with you… not to mention that I thought you didn't know at all _what _it was that they were doing together…"

"You mean you thought I did not know that it wasn't the stork that brought the babies?" Emily crossed her arms with a defiant look.

"Weeeeell…" the boy ran a hand nervously across his unruly locks. "Yeah."

"Peter Dyer, we are of the same age! If _you _know how babies are made, why should _I _not know?"

"Because…" the boy reddened, "you're a girl."

"I'm… not a girl!"

"Then what are you? A chicken?"

Emily boxed into Dyer's arm, not at all gently. "You know what I meant. I am not like… other girls!"

"Of course, other girls don't punch my arm so badly that I can barely move it," Dyer hissed and rubbed the sore spot she had hit.

"Sorry." She made a grimace. "I just wanted to make a point."

"Well, you did," the boy laughed, "and I didn't want to insult you, it's just… whether you like it or not, you _are_ a girl. Not an ordinary girl," he added hastily, very likely in fear of her fist, "but a girl still. And girls are usually… not told. Why, according to Dunne, many of them get married wholly unaware of what is awaiting them on their wedding night!"

Emily's eyes widened. "Christ, that sounds awful! How lucky Mother told me everything! At least I know what it is that I don't want to do with any man. Ever."

"Ever?" Dyer asked challengingly. "You sure?"

"Of course, it's yucky!"

"And what of poor Excidium? Would you leave him without a future captain just because you refused to… you know…?"

Emily gave him a piercing glance that shut him up, at least for a few seconds. Meanwhile the rest of the crew had decided that their little quarrel was not interesting enough to listen to and began queuing around Gong Su's cauldron with watering mouths. Probably, Emily concluded, they had not even realised what she and Dyer had been arguing about. She hoped they had not.

"Er, Emily…" her friend cleared his throat, sounding slightly guilty, "you won't be mad at the captain now, will you?"

She bit into her lower lip and cast her eyes down. "I think not. As long as he's nice with Mother. And I suppose he must be nice with her… when Mother told me those things about mating and babies… shortly before we left for China, I asked her if she liked doing it… and she said that she had not always liked it." Emily hugged her pulled-up legs, feeling a little embarrassed. "She said she hadn't liked it with my father much, and that her second lover years later was a bit better, but still not good enough… but she also said that recently she had grown to like it. A lot. She just did not say with whom she had grown to like it and I didn't want to pry…" She glanced in her captain's direction to see him half-turned away, his profile looking troubled. Despite the strict line of his lips pressed tightly together, at that moment he looked much younger than he really was, and much more helpless. "I think…" she licked her lips, "Mother must have meant him. And that means he's nice to her. He pleases her. So… I suppose I shouldn't be mad at him. It's just… weird… and surprising. That's all."

"Surprising, eh? I can imagine that," Dyer chuckled.

"You know…" Emily cocked her head, watching as the sun setting over the peaks bathed her captain's face in glowing orange, "you have to admit, Mother has a fine taste. He's cute."

"He's what?" Dyer gasped. "Emily!"

"What?" she grinned, arching an eyebrow at him playfully. "I'm a girl, after all… remember?"

"I wish at times like these you'd forget you are," Dyer grinned back.

"I'll try," she promised, and managed to keep her promise for weeks, until one day in the Pamirs her captain forbade her to bathe with the others, reminding her that she was beginning to be a young lady.

"Oh," she replied to him, dripping wet and shivering in the blanket he had bundled her into, "Mother has told me all about that, but I have not started bleeding yet, and anyway I would not like to go to bed with any of them."

The same flush appeared on her captain's face as weeks earlier by the mountain lake, and he hastily ordered her to get dressed and help Dyer around the invalids.

"Should Mother ever get bored of him," she whispered to her friend, her eyes shifting back to the captain, "some day, when I am grown… I might make an exception with him."

**FIN**

**A/N: Reviews are always welcome and highly treasured. Especially in a fandom so small.**


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